The colonies, so united, would have been sufficiently strong to have defended themselves; there would then have been no need of troops from England; of course, the subsequent pretence for taxing America, and the bloody contest it occasioned, would have been avoided." _B. Franklin, Autobiography (edited by John Bigelow) volume 1, pages 308-310._ "When the members assembled at the Court House in Albany on the 19th of June, it was found that Pennsylvania, was not alone in appointing a distinguished citizen to represent her. On the roll of the congress were the names of Lieutenant-governor De Lancey, of New York, who presided; and from the same province William Smith, the historian, and the future Sir William Johnson, not yet made a baronet. From the proprietary provinces of Pennsylvania and Maryland were the well known officials, John Penn, grandson of the founder; Richard Peters; and Benjamin Tasker. From the province of New Hampshire were her future governor, Meshech Weare, and Theodore Atkinson; and from the province of Massachusetts Bay, the late Lieutenant-governor, Thomas Hutchinson, Colonel John Chandler, of Worcester, and Oliver Partridge, a man of commanding influence in western Massachusetts. Lastly, the two colonies which had so tenaciously preserved their charter governments through the vicissitudes of more than a century,—Connecticut and Rhode Island,—had acceded to the repeated solicitations of the home government, and with unfeigned reluctance, we may be sure, had sent as representatives men of such wide experience in their colonial concerns as Roger Wolcott, Jr., and Stephen Hopkins, 'America,' says Mr. Bancroft, 'had never seen an assembly so venerable for the states that were represented, or for the great and able men who composed it.' They were detained in this hospitable old Dutch town for more than three weeks. … Franklin's plan … was not approved by a single one of the colonial assemblies before which it was brought; and … no action was ever taken on it in England. Yet there is no contribution to constructive statesmanship preceding the year 1776, which had a profounder effect on the subsequent growth and development of the idea of American nationality. Even in the amended form in which it was 'approved' by the congress, it was, says a recent writer, 'in advance of the Articles [of Confederation] in its national spirit, and served as the prototype of the constitution itself.'" _W. E. Foster, Stephen Hopkins: a Rhode Island Statesman, chapter 6 (part 1)._ The Plan of Union, as adopted by the Congress at Albany, was accompanied by a "Representation of the Present State of the Colonies." The following is the full text of the Representation, followed by that of the Plan of Union: